$teve is not a name...it's a state of mind. From McGarrett to Young to Wonder to Austin to Vai to Ray Vaughan to Largent to Nash to Spielberg to Carell to Colbert to Martin to King to McQueen, all are great...but a $teve by any other name would still be just as great.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Trip to Tahoe & Virginia City

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Friday night, Izzy & I drove up to Truckee to spend the weekend with her aunts who own a place up there… and let’s face it, I just LOVE the Lake Tahoe area in the summertime… and this weekend was absolutely perfect for it. The daytime highs are in the 70’s with clear blue skies (despite some wildfires west of there) and the nights get pretty crisp in the 30’s/40’s. My kind of weather… shorts weather… but yeah, the first night we just had a few beers and kicked back.

Saturday, the four of us went out to Virginia City, which you may remember from an entry about five years ago when I lived in Tahoe. Basically Virginia City is a small town with one main street where the buildings are basically pretty similar to the way they were back in the silver mining days in the 19th century… just now with coffee shops & souvenir shops alongside their many, many bars & old timey photo businesses. Oh… and there are trains and mine tours and haunted hotel tours and all kinds of great fun stuff to do… so yeah, go check it out if you’re in the neighborhood. Here are some pictures…

One stop was Virginia City Brewing which… I kid you not, apparently started their FIRST batch that morning… so none of their beer on tap, but we got to talk to one of the brewers for a bit & enjoy some other craft brews on tap…

On the way back to the cabin, we stopped for dinner at Great Basin Brewing Company in Reno/Sparks… and yes, they have great Award-winning beer of all types… but there’s also great food there… and here are some pictures of that…

That night back at the cabin, we also tried our barrel-aged Scotch Ale… or I like to call it, Scotchy Scotch Scotch… and it’s pretty fantastic. Somewhere in the 7-8% ABV area… great smokey, oaky flavors on a malty backbone of a Scotch ale… and crystal clear in a rich mahogany color (keeping with the Anchorman theme) but… I’ll have to get a better picture of it another time for the blog since… well, this was the cup that was handy…

Sunday, we started off the morning by doing some tie dying T-shirts with ice & powder dyes, which I had never tried before… and here are some of the beautiful pictures of us doing it… but yeah, may have to wait a day or two for final results on the shirts. Can you guess which one is mine? The best one of course…

We also took a few walks throughout the day to local swim/fishin’ holes… which is always a treat…

That evening, we headed back to the Bay Area (after a quick stop at Fifty Fifty Brewing to fill up our growler with Totality Imperial Stout) and got some beautiful shots of the smoke cloud made by the wildfires nearby… our heart goes out to the people in danger & the firefighters keeping it in check… but yeah, made for a pretty amazing sunset…

So yeah, it was a fantastic weekend with my lady & her aunties… and I’m blessed to be a part of their lives… and vice versa (HA!!!). It’s always great to see those beautiful mountains, wonderful weather, great beer, but most of all great people to share it all with. I hope you get many, many similar opportunities… have a great week everybody!!!